One of the most common social media marketing mistakes made by small business owners is using their personal Facebook profile to promote their brand.
Businesses are Prohibited from Using Profiles
As per Facebook’s Terms and Conditions, businesses are prohibited from creating and/or using profiles to promote their products or services. “It’s against the Facebook Terms to use your personal account to represent something other than yourself (ex: your business),” wrote Facebook in an article describing the differences between pages and profiles. The author added that users who violate this rule are at risk for having their account(s) permanently deleted. You CAN, however, use a page to promote your business’s products or services.
There’s No Limit on ‘Likes’
It’s a little-known fact that Facebook profiles have a limit on the number of people who can befriend and follow them. Currently, this number is set to 5,000, meaning no one else can add you as a friend once you’ve reached 5,000 friends. Facebook pages, on the other hand, have no limit on the amount of ‘likes’ they can receive. Likes are essentially the equivalent of friends for pages, with users clicking the ‘like’ button to follow a page.
Access to Facebook Insights
Ask any seasoned Internet marketer and they’ll agree: the key to running a successful campaign lies in monitoring and analyzing metrics. If you don’t who’s searching for your brand, where they came from, and the keywords they searched for, you won’t be able to effectively optimize your marketing campaigns for higher conversions. Choosing to promote your brand on a Facebook profile means you won’t have to access to metrics such as this via Facebook Insights.
Pages Look More Professional
Compare a Facebook page and profile side and by side and ask yourself which one looks more professional? The undisputed answer to this question is a page. Facebook pages offer more customization features than their profile counterpart, allowing business owners to enhance their presence on the social media network while reaching a broader audience.
Promoted Posts
With Facebook profiles, you won’t be able to take advantage of the network’s self-serving ad platform, Facebook Ads. However, business owners who take the time to set up a page can purchase ad space via Facebook Ads to attract new likes, and ultimately more customers. Facebook Ads allows users to boost their posts simply by clicking the “boost post” button at the bottom-right corner.
